


Alone

by orphan_account



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Angst, Birthday, Gen, Murder, Regret, Remorse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 11:05:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Peter’s power gone, and all the extras that had accompanied it, Sylar was the single most unstoppable force on the face of the planet. Truly, he was a God among men. So why didn’t he feel any satisfaction?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime in series 3, after he kills Elle but before he meets Luke.

He didn’t realize. Not straight away, anyway. There was blood staining his shirt when he woke up in a house that had once belonged to someone, but not any more. Their body was downstairs. His only thought, as he helped himself to the food in their fridge, was that he had to keep moving, because he still didn’t quite feel right with the transition back to cold-hearted killer, and more people would arrive here soon. The police, maybe.

The woman’s power had been one he already possessed. He’d killed her anyway. Apparently he did that now.

He told himself that the addition of her ability would make the one he already had stronger. He was lying to himself. He was angry, and he wanted to kill. But he was still remorseful. There was still that empathy that damaged him so much; still the caring that had compelled him to slow down Peter’s fall, saving the man’s life. 

Breaking into the car was easy, just a simple thought and the door was clicking open.  That got him thinking, about how powerful he was. With Peter’s power gone, and all the extras that had accompanied it, Sylar was the single most unstoppable force on the face of the planet. Truly, he was a God among men. So why didn’t he feel any satisfaction? Maybe it was because there were still others to purge. Matt Parkman could read minds, could control others. He had never taken that particular skill from Eden; it would’ve been useful. Hiro Nakamura could stop time, teleport and travel in time. Maybe Hiro couldn’t make use of those powers currently, but Sylar knew that they were still there, inside his brain. He could still take them. And then there was Mohinder, with what Sylar desired most: Strength. He remembered all too vividly the easy way in which Alejandro and Noah had overcome him when it had come to physical blows. He had so much, but there was still so much more to take, to make his own.

He knew, though, that that was only half the reason. He still felt so alone. Even during the brief period when he had strived for good, had endeavored to defeat the undefeatable Hunger, he had been hated for the things he had done. Well, hated by everyone except Elle. But she had lied to him. She had deserved to die, after the manipulation and way that she had encouraged him to give into those urges.

Loneliness. It was a curious thing. He’d been plagued by it his entire childhood. Never had a friend, had sat alone in his room, completing endless puzzles (he always knew, rather instinctively, where the pieces should go) and fixing things. Old watches, small toys or other electronics. He could always put them back together again. He was intelligent, vastly so, and his teachers had loved him for it; they’d praised his eye for detail and his limitless enthusiasm for finding out how things worked. Everyone else had hated him. They’d avoided him like a pariah.

It was rather ironic how nothing had changed.

The landscape whizzed by as he drove as fast as he could along the freeway, as if the speed would keep the tears at bay. He liked to convince himself that he was emotionless, a sociopath, but that wasn’t who he was. His emotions compelled him to kill, and they compelled him now to run away from himself. He wanted revenge; he wanted to be evil—the monstrosity he was accused of. Because what was he if not for that?

A police car began to tail him, but with a flick of a finger it was on its back, and the occupants of the driver and passenger’s seats were most probably dead. He wanted to be left to himself, although he didn’t want to be alone. If he was honest with himself, which he rarely was, he missed the presence of Elle. Not even in a sexual way, it was just nice having someone to talk to. She hadn’t understood him, not at all, but she had listened to what he had to say, even if he had mostly communicated in monosyllables.

If he could have chosen a travelling companion, he would have been reluctant to admit that it would have been Peter. There had been a fraction of a moment in the grand scheme of this plot when he had thought that they were brothers; that they could work together to achieve good. Peter, if anyone, could understand the amount of power that could be contained in one body. After all, there had been a time when Peter had possessed more abilities than Sylar himself. Peter was an idealist, so hopeful in the face of ultimate defeat, that he could change Sylar. Sylar knew that that was the truth. So his desire to be in the company of his nemesis—was it undeniably due to his want for goodness? Maybe.

His gaze ran over the dashboard of the car, and that was when something caught his eye, something extremely important. The clock was a new one, in good condition, and complicated in its processes. Sylar smiled to himself: Once, he would have loved to make one like this. It showed both the time and date. The time was five pm; he’d been driving for over six hours, and the date was the 21st of September.

His birthday.

Mouth stretching into a grotesque sort of smile, he pulled into a grassy bank off the side of the freeway, crashing through the barriers without a care for their upkeep. A ghastly sob tore through him as he sat there, with only the sound of his own labored breathing and the feel of blood on his skin. He hadn’t cleaned it off yet.

There were no happy birthdays from his childhood, but in his adult life he had always rewarded himself with an extra-complicated watch to complete for the day. It had given him a sense of peace and contentment to manipulate the pieces for twenty-four hours, before he almost passed out from exhaustion. There had been a time when fixing watches had brought him all the joy he had needed. Now he was a murderer, alone in a very different way, with no promise of a home, or of love.

He hated himself. He hated whatever cruel deity had given him his ‘gift’; he hated his father, both the real and the fake. He loathed his mother, her obsession with him becoming unique. He despised Angela and Arthur, Noah Bennet and Mohinder. All of them. It was so easy to shift the blame, piece by piece, onto each and every one of them. For what he had become, it was easier to burden others with the guilt. He had always been a slave to his own power, but they had encouraged it, added fuel to the fire.

“Happy birthday,” he muttered softly to himself, bitterly.

For not the first time, he wished he could die.

There would be no Elle to prevent the rope from choking him, this time. However, his biology would repair itself—Claire’s power only gave him a few options left.

Dropping his head into his hands, he screamed, and didn’t stop for a very long time.


End file.
